J.D. McClatchy is an architect of the poetic form. He builds structural wonders with words and fills these structures with thought and reflection. The author of six poetry collections, McClatchy also teaches at Yale University and edits the Yale Review, in addition to poetry compilations for Vintage and the Everyman's Library. Plundered Hearts is a definitive collection of some of his finest poems from the past 30 years.
Following in the rich tradition of such luminaries as W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, McClatchy explores the recesses of desire, revealing what touches our hearts and what breaks them. In "Proust in Bed" he writes, "For the next forbidden fruit--the taste/ Of apricots and ripe gruyere is on the hand/ He licks--the next wide-open mouth/ To slip his tongue into the communion/ Wafer." In "Late Night Ode," he laments, "Some nights I've laughed so hard the tears/ Won't stop. Look at me now. Why now?/ I long ago gave up pretending to believe/ Anyone's memory will give as good as it gets."
His poems are like gleaming glass skyscrapers--formal, sparkling and spare. Inside the polished exteriors are the intricate, sometimes dark workings that make us who we are. And shimmer the poems do, reflecting not only the life of the author, but the life of the reader as well. We're built, McClatchy seems to say, with the same materials, just not in the same ways. His life's work highlights our differences and our similarities. --Jonathan Shipley, freelance writer